State Bar Court Increases Length of Proposed
Suspension Of Immigration Lawyer Working With ‘Notarios’

By ROBERT GREENE, Staff
Writer

A Los Angeles
immigration lawyer will be suspended—absent intervention by the state Supreme
Court—for at least three years for abandoning clients and helping non-lawyer
“notarios” engage in what the State Bar of California charges was unauthorized
practice of law.

James R. Valinoti was
slapped with a two-year suspension at the trial court level, but his appeal to
the State Bar Review Department resulted in another year of actual suspension
and two years probation. A dissent from the Dec. 31 opinion, made public
yesterday, went further and called for Valinoti’s disbarment.

Four of nine instances
of misconduct in the early years of Valinoti’s practice resulted in deportation
orders, the State Bar said. Those orders were later reversed.

Valinoti, 38, said he
was devastated by the ruling. He charged that the State Bar treated him
unfairly, without regard for the way immigration attorneys must conduct their
practices to protect their clients’ interests after the clients have visited
legitimate, or outlaw, non-lawyer consultants.

“If I’m doing something
wrong, then I promise you 60 other immigration lawyers are as well,” Valinoti
said.

Hundreds of clients come
to him, Valinoti said, after so-called notarios win delays for their clients by
filing fraudulent asylum applications, leaving him to do his best to salvage
their chances at obtaining a green card. He said others are referred by
legitimate immigration consultants who save their clients thousands of dollars
by doing the brunt of the voluminous paperwork, then referring them to lawyers
like Valinoti when it comes time for an initial appearance before an
immigration judge.

But the Review Department,
in a 100-page opinion by Presiding Judge Ronald Stovitz, said Valinoti actually
was assisting in the unauthorized practice of law by working hand-in-hand with
illegitimate immigration consultants.

“[B]y relying on or
permitting those nonattorney providers to prepare and file immigration
applications, pleadings, and other documents for his clients—[Valinoti]
deliberately aided and abetted the providers to represent aliens in violation
of federal law,” Stovitz wrote.

The Review Department
also rejected Valinoti’s arguments that he acted within the norm of immigration
law and that he simply served as “appearance counsel” for many of his clients
after the paperwork was performed by notarios.

Stovitz noted that as
soon as a lawyer files an official notice of appearance as attorney for an
immigration clientówhat immigration lawyers know as a Form EOIR-28óhe or she
becomes attorney of record, cannot withdraw without permission of the
immigration judge, and has “the duty to competently represent the client before
the immigration court and to properly prepare each and every application,
pleading and document necessary for proper representation of that client.”

Valinoti violated
federal regulations by permitting nonlawyers to prepare immigration court
documents once he had signed a EOIR-28, Stovitx said.

The court also found
that Valinoti had an irresponsibly high caseload managed by too small a support
staff. The opinion cited several attorneys he hired and assigned to immigration
clients without adequately training them.

Less than two years
after opening his office, he said, he had a personal caseload of more than
1,000, with another 700 cases assigned to lawyers associated with him.

In several cases,
Valinoti was referred cases in which an alien seeking permanent residence went
to a nonlawyer notario, who filed an application for asylum knowing the client
lacked the well-founded fear of persecution to qualify. The filing often
qualifies the would-be immigrant for temporary work authorization.

Valinoti would take the
case and properly withdraw the fraudulent application. But he failed in some
cases to follow up with an application to suspend deportation, believing, he
told the State
Bar Court,
that the consultant or another lawyer was taking care of it.

Stovitz said Valinoti
also failed to notify his clients when he moved his offices, so they often
couldn’t find him, and lied to immigration judges about the status of some of
his cases.

Immigration consultants,
who often advertise themselves as notarios, are a fixture in the business of
immigration counseling, especially for Latin American clients who seek their
services in part because they speak Spanish and in part because professionals
called notarios have the status of attorneys in many Latin American nations.

In the United States, however, a notario is
often simply a notary public whose only legal authority is to witness
signatures on documents.

The Legislature has
attempted to crack down on U.S.
notarios who may or may not actually be notaries public but rarely are
attorneys. Many immigration lawyers complain that notarios steal legitimate
business, damage their clients’ legal status and denigrate the true profession
of immigration law.

But many immigration
lawyers work directly or indirectly with notarios, taking referrals from them
or otherwise picking up their cases when it is time for a court appearance that
cannot be made by a nonlawyer.

Stovitz made a point in
his opinion of declining to refer to nonattorney service providers as notarios,
calling the term deceptive. He also rejected the term immigration consultant,
except as applied to a statutorily defined class of professional.

None of the numerous
nonattorney immigration service providers cited in the Valinoti opinion were
statutory immigration consultants.

One of the nonattorney
services cited in the opinion was called JVóthe same initials as Valinoti’sóand
shared an office with the lawyer.

Stovitz’s opinion was
joined by State Bar Court Hearing Judge Paul Bacigalupo, who was sitting by
designation and since has been elected to the Los Angeles Superior Court. James
Obrien, retired presiding judge of the State Bar Court, sat by designation and authored a
strongly worded dissent calling for Valinoti’s disbarment.

Valinoti’s lawyer,
former State Bar attorney R. Gerald Markle of the South Pasadena firm of Markle &
Pansky, called the opinion “very harsh.”

Allen Blumenthal of the
State Bar Office of Chief Trial Counsel said charges were brought against
Valinoti at about the time of the virtual shutdown of the State Bar due to
then-Gov. Pete Wilson’s veto of a lawyer fee bill. The charges had nothing to
do with a ramping-up of efforts to close illegitimate immigration consulting
businesses, he said.

Valinoti said the State
Bar’s stance was shaped by a need to appear tough in the wake of the shut-down.

“I feel the State Bar
came out blood-hungry after me,” he said.

The lawyer acknowledged
being somewhat disorganized in the early days of his practice, and said his
fate may have been sealed when, in the midst of a relationship problem, he
failed to respond to an initial contact by the State Bar.

But he said the problem
was largely part of the structure of the immigration system. People from other
countries desperate to get work authorization here must “play games” with the
law, he said, before coming to immigration lawyers to clean up what they have
done.

If a lawyer has been
unable to help and an immigrant is facing deportation, he said, the answer is
often to get a new lawyer and file a so-called Lozado motion to reopen
the case—on the ground prior counsel was incompetent—and gaining a further
delay.

His case was hurt by
those kinds of filings by former clients, he said.

Valinoti said he did not
plan to appeal to the Supreme Court, which must enter a final discipline order.
He said he would turn over his practice to other lawyers, perhaps those who
work with him at his current office in the City National Bank building near Pershing Square, where the immigration
court is located.